Time-outs, too much?

I’ve had a week chockablock with illness, summer camps and puppy ownership. Inevitably during my downtime, I was watching mind numbing telly to escape the circus. Enter Rosie Pope of Pregnant in Heels, who proclaimed… “I’m happy you’re not for time-outs. A lot of people think time-outs humiliate a child.”

Now, I use time-outs, and I naively thought this was the social norm for discipline. Our western world doesn’t fully accept spanking anymore,

Those who oppose spanking as a form of discipline say that, in modern democratic societies, hitting a child — in any circumstance — is unacceptable. Not only does it encourage violence, they argue, it is an affront to human dignity.

Was I spanked? Of course, but did some parents abuse the power they had? Yes. It seems that now the same thing is happening with time-outs.

Parents are posting their child’s time out videos on the Internet. All of these children are all under 24 months of age- still in diapers. […]

This is a clear example of where American parents are failing their children and our society. It’s humiliating enough for a child to be disciplined in private, but then to post it on the Internet? What purpose does this serve?

The point is, any form of discipline can be misused, but older children and grown-ups should feel bad when they do something wrong. Discipline achieves that, and we shouldn’t let a handful of parents who use more than reasonable force set the bar for the rest of us. I’m assuming Rosie Pope has a lot of followers who may take her advice without any salt, but I’m keeping my time-out step.

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Andrea adds: Thanks, Jennifer for this post. This is one I must add to before it imports to Facebook where people will think I’ve been sick, at summercamp and that I got a puppy. So. My two cents: any child discipline can be abused, be it spanking or time-outs. I’m not opposed to parents using either of those things, done appropriately.

Comments

I must say I am one of those parents who chooses not to spank; however, there must be some form of something. We us time-outs or as friends of ours call it “think about its”, which are less about discipline and more about correction. It’s a time for the child to be removed from the chaos of the moment and given time to think about what he/she has done and how they can do it differently next time. When done properly, the child still feels loved and feels safe, because boundaries were set and maintained. It’s really good for them. Our son is never put into a time out by us in anger, since that’s not productive and the reason for the time out is always explained. We also use a timer and it’s set for 5 mins, because he’s 5. When he was 3 it was set for 3 mins and so on. If we have company then he is always removed from the situation and the timeout is given privately and the same goes for if we’re in public. There is no reason to make it an embarassing humiliating thing.

It makes me wonder how some parents use the time-out if they think it’s too humiliating or belittling for the child. If that’s the case, then how exactly do they correct them or teach them. To use the logic that there are no time-outs, because it’s humiliating, then taking something away from them would be embarassing too. How do they correct the behaviour? What tools or ways of communicating do the use? I’m just curious. There must be something done in it’s place.

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